One couple’s desire for a child has them opening their doors to the most dangerous of options, in “When the Bough Breaks”. John and Laura Taylor (Morris Chestnut and Regina Hall) are a young, professional happy couple who’s one wish is that they desperately want a baby. After exhausting all other options on the table, they finally hire Anna (Jaz Sinclair), a stranger who they deem the perfect woman to be their surrogate. but as she gets further along in her pregnancy, so too does her psychotic rage and dangerous fixation on the husband. Creepy things start to happen, and Laura realizes that the sweetest deeds in life are often too good to be true. With time, The couple becomes caught up in Anna’s deadly game and must fight to regain control of their future and household before it’s too late. “When the Bough Breaks” is directed by Jon Cassar, and is rated PG-13 for violence, sexuality involving partial nudity, thematic elements, disturbing imagery, and adult language.
A couple of times a year, I will watch a movie that I wasn’t particularly in love with, but find it numbingly difficult to write it off as being something that I simply didn’t like. That is the case with “When the Bough Breaks”, the newest in a line of what I call “Stalker September”. Movies like “The Perfect Guy”, “Obsessed”, and “No Good Deed” are just a couple of films in the ever-growing list of these predictable heart-stoppers that hit theaters every year, and they certainly aren’t always the easiest to grade because of a script that is so far left of the middle that it doesn’t even feel like it was written by a human. Cassar’s film is every bit a Lifetime Television movie-of-the-week with better acting. An episode of VH1’s “Love and Hip Hop” with a much bigger budget. Even a teenage thriller with much bigger consequences. Every compliment that I just paid this movie might feel like I enjoyed it, but I have that lingering feeling that stuck with me long after I left the theater, that I just can’t get over the many challenging obstacles that this movie never conquers for itself.
This is a movie in tone that is played very flat, and maybe a lot of that is based off of seeing one or two of these type of movies every year, but I feel like it just lacked any kind of well developed suspense. For the first hour of this movie, everything moves very quickly in terms of character development, revealing backstories, and what little subplots that the movie establishes for itself early to play to the audience in a “Wink-Wink” kind of way later on. It feels quite predictable when something like a cat that is only seen once in the movie, will surely come back by the end and make its presence felt in a manner that I’m sure you can already imagine like I did. Everything just feels very rushed, but this isn’t necessarily a terrible thing. This is where the pacing felt the strongest for me. The problem is that the last forty minutes of the movie feel like they stand still during some of the single strangest character directions that I have seen in a long time. If you bring any kind of logical response to this movie, leave it in the lobby, because this movie is perplexing at just how truly dumbfounded it treats its audience heading into the final third of the movie. I recommend these kind of movies usually to a female audience who digs Lifetime movies, but it will be difficult to justify this one even in terms of the woman who yearns for a sexy, seductive stalker flick. It replaces empathy with utter silliness about halfway into the movie, and never looked back. I did have fun, but it was more in the direction of laughing at it, instead of with it.
The cinematography looks rich for a 13 million dollar budget, mostly encompassing the believability in set design that this married couple are every bit of who the movie tells us they are. Unfortunately, some of the production renders this of any kind of originality or fresh outlook for the film’s look. The editing felt very choppy, and left me with a taste of a lot being axed on the cutting room floor for the lengthy explanations that a lot of logical points deserve within this movie. The musical score (By John Frizzell) doesn’t offer anything ambitious, and instead settles for the same kind of manipulative musical tones that relate to an audience how we are supposed to subconsciously feel about each character, as if you’re too dumb to figure it out on your own. Nothing about this ever feels subtle, and the finished product feels like a shining example of everything that a critical snob like me makes fun of for this particular genre.
The movie isn’t a total loss however, as the trio of main cast within this movie shine through a script that tries to limit and shatter their moral code. Jaz Sinclair makes the most of her first major role, supplementing a mutual blend of childlike innocence in her outside demeanor, with a raging fire that burns just beneath the eyes of deceiving interior. Seriously, her eyes is her greatest case for being cast in this movie, as Sinclair delivers on moments of creepy that will make the hair on your arms stand up. While her dialogue isn’t anything that will keep laughs out of your system, Jaz’s age is the reason why something like this could feel believable when cast opposite of two actors who are a considerable amount of years older than her. This certainly isn’t Morris Chestnut’s first role similar to this, but it’s nice to see Morris dominate the screen time, especially considering this movie feels very much like a female story while establishing the boundaries of a surrogate. It’s really through his mental dilemma’s who we relate to the most throughout the story, and this gives Chestnut ample time to execute a human side in an otherwise demented foreground to this story’s characters. Regina Hall also continues to impress me. It’s funny to see her in serious roles after starting in 2000’s “Scary Movie”, but Hall has made the transition effortlessly, delivering a strong, sexy and determined woman that the audience can cheer for. Hall’s character isn’t seen a lot during the second act of this movie, but when she returns it honestly felt like the scenes that made the most sense to me creatively. Hopefully Regina is given more chances to show off her acting chops, as her performance here is structurally sound in demanding (Not begging) the audience’s empathy.
Overall, “When the Bough Breaks” isn’t a terrible movie, but it’s just been done too many times to ever add anything original or stimulating to the crowded stalker genre. The rules are thrown out the window during a third act that turns everything upside down, but makes us feel miles away from logical island, instead focusing on the audience’s shock factor, instead of anything that feels remotely resembling a human instinct. Led by three convincing performances, Cassar’s film delivers as a girls night movie and not much else.
5/10